


Age(s) of the Geek, chapter 1 - Leverage / Buffy

by mermaid



Series: Five times that Alec Hardison crossed paths with other geeks [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-03
Updated: 2010-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaid/pseuds/mermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Willow Rosenberg was the one who taught Alec Hardison how to hack? Their chance meeting as teenagers affects the course of Alec's life in unexpected ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Age(s) of the Geek, chapter 1 - Leverage / Buffy

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** non-graphic horror themes and canonical character death.  
> **Spoilers:** for seasons 1-4 of _Buffy_. Set many years pre-canon for _Leverage_, so no spoilers.
> 
> **Author's notes:** this is the first in a series of interconnected _Leverage_ crossovers, all focusing on Alec Hardison and his encounters with fellow geeks from five other TV shows. It's a vastly overgrown "5 times" fic, in 7 parts!
> 
> The stories are almost all set before the start of _Leverage_. I've made Hardison a couple of years older, to fit in with the timelines of the other shows. Otherwise, I haven't really messed with _Leverage_ canon.

  
  
**Alec Hardison and Willow Rosenberg, 1998 – 2001**   
  


Alec had been excited about going to Chicago to compete in the National Science Fair – it was the furthest he'd ever been from his Nana's home. The city was pretty spectacular, with the lake and all. But he wasn't impressed by how _cold_ it was, even in spring.

The heat at the venue was cranked up high, though, so he had to remove multiple layers of clothing once he got inside. The pretty girl whose exhibit was next to Alec's had also arrived all wrapped up, and they stripped off in unison. He picked up her mitten when she dropped it, and she thanked him politely. She had a soft voice, pale freckled skin, and long red hair, and Alec's heart beat faster when she smiled at him.

He usually got nervous around girls, especially older ones, but he felt emboldened by the nerd-rich atmosphere of the science fair. He introduced himself as Alec Hardison, a freshman from Atlanta, Georgia; the redhead said she was Willow Rosenberg, a sophomore from Sunnydale, California. Even her name was beautiful, Alec thought, but he wasn't idiotic enough to say that out loud.

Willow shook his hand, and then asked him about his exhibit. It was a good choice for an opening topic, as Alec was utterly at ease when it came to talking about computers.

His project looked at Internet transfer speeds, focusing on how to bundle and compress e-mail attachments so they could be downloaded faster. He had started it for entirely selfish reasons. In a house full of kids who all wanted to use the single phone line, it drove Alec _crazy_ to spend so much of his allocated half-hour online waiting for his e-mail to download.

Willow was an only child with a computer all to herself, so she couldn't empathize with the sharing thing. But she seemed impressed by his work, saying that she often had big files e-mailed to her by online contacts and that sometimes their contents were urgent.

Alec didn't know what a 16-year-old girl could be receiving that was so crucial, but he didn't ask. He had a teenaged foster sister, so he knew the penalties for questioning the importance of girls' social communication. If he went even a minute over his computer time, Sheena started whining about the phone call she was expecting. He'd tried pointing out that she spent all day with her friends at school, so why did she have to talk to them all night too? Yeah...that conversation hadn't ended well for him. Teenage girls could be _vicious_, man.

Willow's project was also about access to information, in a way. She was looking at how to improve the transfer of data from books to computer-readable format. Scanners existed, but were very expensive and irritatingly slow. Willow explained that she'd had a bad experience while scanning an old book in her school library. She didn't go into detail, leaving Alec to imagine hellish paper cuts, or all the letters coming out as hieroglyphs.

Anyway, it had motivated Willow to build her own handheld scanner; she handed over the prototype for him to examine. Alec thought it was incredibly cool, although he personally would have designed it to look more like something out of sci-fi (all shiny metal and flashing lights). In his opinion, futuristic technology should _look_ futuristic.

All the contestants had to sit in front of their colorful and carefully-lettered displays until the judges reached their section. Willow's exhibit was set up at the end of a long row; the exhibit on the other side of Alec's was something very complicated about microscopes, and the senior sitting in front of it never looked up from her biology textbook. So Alec and Willow talked to each other for most of the morning, kinda by default.

But spending time with Willow wasn't any hardship for Alec – he thought she was _amazing_. She didn't giggle, or talk down to him because he was younger, or look at him funny when he talked about computers. They had so much in common!

As the day wore on, Willow seemed to relax her guard a little. She admitted to accessing information that wasn't strictly in the public domain. Alec was awed: she talked about breaking into computer systems so casually, like it was real easy. But she seemed to have an odd fascination with urban infrastructure, like electrical tunnels and empty warehouses, which meant she often hacked into her town's official records.

Alec asked why Willow didn't use her skills to infiltrate more important or interesting targets, and got a surprising answer: she and her friends investigated strange goings-on in Sunnydale, because the local police were pretty useless.

"So, what, you're like the Scooby-Doo gang?"

Willow laughed. "Something like that, yeah. I guess I must be Velma!"

Alec wistfully thought that he'd _love_ to be in a crime-solving crew. He wasn't too good at fighting, and he preferred to run away from danger rather than towards it (so did that make him Shaggy?). But maybe he could be in charge of the technical side of things, saving the day with his computer. That would be so wicked.

Willow was a good listener, and it was rare for Alec to meet someone who spoke his language and might understand his ambitions. So over lunch, Alec outlined his master plan to her.

First, he had to make enough money to buy his own computer. He had an after school job at the local grocery store, but that was too low-paid to get him far. So he was going to establish his own business, helping people with their computer problems.

Alec was only 14, but he was real good at talking to adults. One of his previous foster-mothers was a Jehovah's Witness; she'd taken him door-to-door when he was a little kid, spreading the word. Nana also hosted Bible study evenings where Alec was expected to hand around snacks and be polite. If he could convince just a few of Nana's friends and neighbors that he could set up or fix their computer, quicker and cheaper than the professional alternative, then word-of-mouth would get him more clients.

Willow thought this was a great idea. She suggested that he use his skills at school as well, offering to help class mates with their computer studies homework for money. It might also be a potent form of barter with bullies.

"After all," she said, "jocks are less likely to hassle nerds who are useful to them." She sounded like she was speaking from experience. Alec, who at 5'11 was one of the tallest freshmen, didn't have too much trouble with the jocks. Mostly they just begged him to join the basketball team. But he could see how having some of the popular kids owe him favors could be real handy...

Second, he wanted to teach himself how to infiltrate computer networks. He'd already found some awesome bulletin boards and newsgroups, where hackers hung out and compared notes. He hadn't been able to spend much time on the sites, with Sheena tapping her watch behind him, and Nana didn't own a printer. But he'd picked up a lot of ideas. He had some firm targets in mind: the Georgia state government by the end of sophomore year (as a warm-up), then the White House in junior year and the Department of Defense by the time he graduated.

Willow commended him on being so goal-oriented, but asked him _why_ he wanted to access those particular computer systems.

"Why not? The Pentagon is like the Mount Everest of hacking," Alec replied.

"Sure, I get that. I'm just saying that you could do something really useful with your skills. My friends and I...we help people. We kinda work undercover, so we don't get much credit, but _we_ know that we've staved off the apocalypse for another week."

Alec laughed at the idea of a group of small-town teenagers saving the world on a regular basis. A couple of seconds later, Willow joined in.

As he finished his lunch, Alec thought about what Willow was saying. He did want the money and the fame that could come from being a computer genius (hello, Bill Gates!). But he could see that life might get a little boring after the first ten million dollars.

If he ever got mega-rich, he decided, he would devote some of his spare time and money to helping people. Sure, it was the right thing to do; more importantly, chicks totally dug generous rich guys.

***

Willow ended up winning the science fair's top prize for her scanner, and had several companies express an interest in producing it commercially. Alec didn't win anything, but that was OK. It was only his first attempt, and he was one of the youngest entrants. He'd be back next year with an even better exhibit.

When it came time to say goodbye, they swapped e-mail addresses. Willow also asked for his home address, which he gave her. The reason for her request became clear two weeks later, when a big envelope arrived in the mail for Alec. It was stuffed full of print-outs from the bulletin boards and newsgroups he'd mentioned, plus more he hadn't come across. It was, basically, a Hacking 101 textbook. It was the best present Alec had ever received!

Over the next couple of years, Willow and Alec stayed in touch by e-mail and via instant messaging. He told her how his installation and repair business had taken off, and how he'd been able to buy his own computer ahead of schedule. He'd even been able to afford a higher speed Internet connection (56K instead of 28K) and a second phone line. With Willow's help, he set out to bend entire networks to his will from the comfort of his bedroom.

They talked about school, their friends, and their future plans. With his kick-ass grades and his disadvantaged background, Alec hoped to win a scholarship to a top college. MIT was first on his list, with Stanford and Berkeley as fallback options. Willow hoped to attend an Ivy League school, but was also thinking of going to Oxford.

Willow told him hilarious stories about her best friends, Buffy and Xander, and about the stuffy British librarian (even for a self-confessed nerd, Willow seemed to spend a _lot_ of time in the school library!) who was dating her favorite teacher. She shared her grief when Ms. Calendar was murdered, and her apprehension about having to take over the teaching of computer classes.

She also told him about her boyfriend Oz, who was smart and funny and who played in a rock band. Alec knew that he had no right to be jealous; he and Willow were just friends. Still, it was hard to bear, because he'd never met another girl who got him the way she did.

***

Willow remained cagey about the extra-curricular work she did with her friends, but it was clearly a huge part of her life. This became even more evident during her senior year, when she had less time to chat and fewer amusing anecdotes to share. She said she was worried about Faith, a new transfer student who was causing trouble, but Alec was sure there was more to it.

It wasn't simple exam stress making Willow so tense and jumpy either, as he knew she could ace finals in her sleep. In any case, getting perfect grades didn't matter so much anymore – she'd decided to stay in Sunnydale for college. The change in Willow made Alec concerned; he asked what was going on, but she always downplayed the situation or changed the subject.

Alec was bored one day, and curious, so he ran an Internet search for the name of Willow's town. He got a surprising number of results from websites devoted to weird occurrences. It seemed that Sunnydale had more than its fair share of mysterious deaths. People disappeared without trace, horribly mauled bodies were found in alleyways, and several empty graves were discovered in the town's cemeteries each week. Willow's high school had a death rate comparable to a school in south LA or inner-city Detroit! Its last principal had even been attacked by rabid dogs in his own office, but the creatures responsible had never been found.

Oddly, the city authorities weren't doing much about the problem. The Mayor had been in office forever, and his father and grandpa before him, and he seemed totally complacent. The cops didn't appear too concerned either, giving obviously false explanations for the frequent bizarre events. "Gang members on PCP"? Yeah, right. Alec lived in a pretty rough area, and he'd _seen_ how PCP addicts acted. They didn't tend to bite people and drink their blood...

On the face of it, Sunnydale was plagued by kidnappers, feral animals and grave robbers. But some of the people posting online had a different interpretation: vampires, demons and other supernatural creatures.

Alec had faith in the things he could see or manipulate, like hardware and software. But he liked to think he had an open mind about pretty much everything else, up to and including the existence of God. So, while he hadn't ever met a vampire, he was willing to believe that they were real. Given the number of people in Willow's town who died from puncture wounds to the neck, vampires seemed to be an entirely logical explanation.

The more he read about Sunnydale, the more Alec wondered about what Willow's "Scooby-Doo gang" did exactly. If most of the weird stuff that happened in their town was supernatural in origin, then did they know that or were they fighting blind? He thought back over his many conversations with Willow, about the things she'd said and not said, and he came to the conclusion that she _definitely_ knew.

Damn! How cool was it that one of his best friends fought vampires? She was like Van Helsing or something.

Over the next few weeks, Alec spent most of his spare time on websites about folklore and paranormal phenomena. There were a lot of crazy folks out there! Some wore tinfoil hats to protect them from alien mind probes; there was even earnest debate as to which brand of aluminum foil was the most effective. But there were also some forum posters who came across as smart and reasonably sane: investigative journalists, grad students, novelists and comic book writers. Especially fascinating were the self-styled "hunters", who seemed to be the paranormal equivalent of storm chasers.

These people were all researching vampires, for whatever reason, and their discussions were by far the most informative and interesting. Alec learned a lot from reading their threads, but it was still a little too abstract for him. He wanted to hear about life on the vampire-fighting front lines.

***

When Alec next saw Willow on MSN Messenger, a rare event these days, he decided to just go for it.

_Hey, Willow...killed any vampires lately?_

30 seconds went by, and Alec feared he'd made a huge mistake. Then she replied.

_Uh, what are you talking about?_

Alec quickly explained that he'd been doing some research on Sunnydale and the supernatural. He assured her that he wasn't freaked out, or mad at her from keeping this from him, and he promised not to tell anyone else that vampires were real.

Finally, she agreed to talk about it – but over the phone, not via chat. Alec disconnected his modem, and a few minutes later the phone in his bedroom rang. It was the first time he'd heard Willow's voice since they'd met at the science fair, two years earlier. He was glad that he'd outgrown the squeaky-voice stage of puberty.

Now he had her attention, he had no idea how to start this conversation. He settled on asking, "So how are things with you?"

Willow sighed. "Well, it's been a quiet week here; just five vampires staked, and nobody tried to end the world. I even had time to study for finals."

Alec tried to imagine what it would be like, living in a town where five vampires and no apocalypse counted as a quiet week. Suddenly his run-down neighborhood didn't seem quite so bad.

Still, he couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "I think it's awesome that you fight vampires! You're like a _superhero_."

"Oh no," Willow replied, "Buffy is the one who does the hard work. The rest of us are more like her sidekicks...except we don't have to wear stupid costumes, thank the Goddess."

"The Goddess?" Alec echoed, confused. He'd thought that Willow was Jewish.

It turned out that Willow had another surprise for him: she'd been inspired by Ms. Calendar to experiment with magic, and was now quite an accomplished Wiccan. Alec had come across people online who claimed to be witches, and most of them seemed to be total kooks. So he asked how Willow could reconcile magic and science.

"They're actually more similar than you'd think," she said. "Spells have to obey certain laws, and you have to do things in a certain order. It's the equivalent of 'if-then' statements in computer programming." This totally made sense to Alec, and he thought – not for the first time – that Willow would be an _excellent_ teacher.

Willow went on to explain that, far from being antithetical, magic could actually work with technology. Case in point: she'd cast a privacy spell on Alec's phone line before calling him, like the one already in place on her line, so nobody could listen in or record their conversation.

"You can't be too careful," Willow warned. "There are people who don't want the truth about Sunnydale getting out...like the mayor."

They talked for another half-hour, with Willow patiently answering Alec's many questions. She told Alec about killing vampires: a stake to the heart, fire, or sunlight were the best methods. Crosses could ward them off but garlic was useless, which meant that all those Dracula movies had misled him. She also confirmed that ghosts were real (Buffy had been possessed by one!), and so were werewolves (Willow was dating one!). It was a lot for Alec to take in, but he believed everything that she said. Willow was one of the few people in the world that he trusted implicitly.

"So if there are vampires all over the place, why is Sunnydale so badly affected?"

"The town was built over a portal to Hell," Willow explained, "so it attracts vampires like moths to a flame. Um, except that vampires don't like fire, so maybe more like bees to honey. Oh, but wait...they don't really like anything sweet either, just the taste of blood. Maybe like mosquitoes to bare ankles in summer?"

Alec grinned. Maybe Willow was a vampire fighter and talented witch as well as a genius, but she still babbled like an idiot sometimes. It was reassuring, in a way.

***

They talked more often after that first conversation. Willow seemed relieved to have a confidant, someone outside the tight circle of people in Sunnydale who knew about what the "Scoobies" did. She revealed to Alec her sense of impending doom. It turned out that the town's mayor not only knew about vampires, but even had some working for him. Mayor Wilkins seemed to be a _seriously_ bad guy, either a demon or in league with demons, and a showdown with him was surely coming.

There wasn't much that Alec could do from the other side of the country to help Willow. The mayor's office was depressingly old-fashioned, with few computerized records. Alec hacked the system, just in case, but there was nothing there that revealed the mayor's plans. Seriously...was it too much to ask for a 10-point check-list entitled "My very easy plan for world domination"? Movie villains always betrayed themselves through arrogance and detailed record-keeping, but Alec guessed it was just another way that Hollywood had lied to him.

Partly to distract himself from events in Sunnydale, and partly due to the revelation that there were vampires _everywhere_, Alec decided to build up his physique. He knew he'd never be a kick-ass fighter, but he could learn to defend himself a little better. So he joined a kick-boxing class at the YMCA, and worked out in the school gym at lunch. This got the basketball team's hopes up, but he stuck to his guns: just because a brother was tall, didn't mean he wanted to play ball!

Alec also whittled his own stakes, and always kept one in his knapsack and another in his jacket pocket. Nana had looked askance at him when he announced he wanted to do some woodworking. Still, she borrowed a whittling knife from one of her church friends who was a real outdoorsy type. Alec loved the way that Nana accepted his weirdness, and didn't ask awkward questions.

Willow stopped calling a couple of weeks before the end of the school year, and didn't reply to Alec's e-mails. He grew increasingly apprehensive. When an explosion during a California school's graduation ceremony made the evening news, Alec wasn't at all surprised that it was Sunnydale High that had gone _kaboom_. The reports said it was a gas leak, but he knew better. He searched feverishly for a list of casualties, online and in the newspapers, but didn't see Willow's name mentioned. Considering that the inferno might have burned some victims beyond recognition, though, he couldn't relax.

When Willow finally called a couple of days later, Alec was incredibly relieved to hear her voice. She apologized for not getting in touch sooner – "it's been totally crazy here" – and told him what had really happened. After hearing the story, Alec readily forgave her. He figured that blowing up your high school to kill the evil mayor, who'd turned into a gigantic snake demon, was a pretty good definition of "totally crazy".

***

In the winter of his senior year, Alec decided to start a new science project: building something that could kill vampires. He wanted to help Willow and her friends, and also wanted a challenge. He'd already been accepted to MIT, with a full ride. While he had to keep his grades up to guarantee his funding, he was really just marking time at high school. Plus, he'd already hacked both the White House and the Pentagon, nearly a year ahead of his grand plan. He was bored now!

His intention was to design a small device that would emit light bright enough to incinerate vampires. Artificially generating light as strong as the sun's rays wasn't too tricky. The hard part was working out how to make the device fatal to vampires, but not harmful to the person wielding it or any bystanders.

He experimented with reflective goggles, and narrow-spectrum beams, but he just couldn't reduce the device's scope so it wouldn't hurt humans. The answer came to Alec while he was killing zombies in his favorite game, _Resident Evil_. Of course! Vampires were like zombies, but with a demon animating the corpse rather than an external controlling force. Without blood flowing around the body, dead tissue was surely very cold. So could he make something that was the opposite of a heat-seeking missile?

As Alec still hadn't encountered a vampire in the flesh, a fact that made him mostly glad but also slightly regretful, he asked Willow to confirm his hypothesis. It turned out that Buffy had dated a vampire (Alec was wildly curious, but didn't ask for details), and could report that a vampire's body was indeed colder than a living person's.

Alec needed one more question answered: were vampires always noticeably colder than their surroundings, even on a hot day? Ever the scientist at heart, Willow conducted an experiment. It turned out she had a guinea pig at hand: a vampire called Spike, who'd had a chip implanted in his head that prevented him attacking humans.

"Spike wasn't exactly _willing_ to help develop your weapon," Willow said when she called Alec. "But Xander had him tied to a chair in his basement already, so he was the most convenient test subject. I stuck a thermometer in Spike's mouth while he was swearing at me. When I told him that the alternatives were his earhole or his asshole, he clamped his lips around the thermometer and just growled instead."

Alec figured this consent process wouldn't pass any kind of inspection from an Ethics committee, but it got him the result he sought. Willow reported that Spike's body temperature registered at 40ºF, just above freezing point. This was despite the fact that the temperature in Xander's basement, with the tumble-dryer running and no air con, was a very warm 80ºF.

So Alec had to design something that could not only avoid humans, but actively target the super-cold spots in a room. He spent weeks formulating a device that he called a "light grenade". The first version, which he tested on himself, resulted in a few seconds of blindness. Being momentarily dazzled was a small price to pay for wiping out all the vampires in the vicinity, but he still wanted to refine it further. If any vampires somehow managed to escape incineration, they could take those precious seconds to kill the people who were trying to kill them.

Willow was an eager long-distance assistant; Alec called her Igor, until she threatened to set a zombie army on him! It was a joke, of course, but her magic was getting stronger all the time. He honestly wouldn't be surprised if she was able to raise the dead some day.

She had access to scientific databases through her college library, as well as Giles' incredible collection of books about vampires, so she sent him lots of useful information. For instance, it turned out that a magic amulet once existed that had the same effect on vampires. Sadly it was lost centuries ago, but a description of how it worked was quite helpful.

When Alec finally had a prototype ready for field testing, he mailed it to Willow. The next time Buffy discovered a nest of vampires, all lounging around in a boarded-up house waiting for sunset, she didn't rush in with stakes in both hands. Instead, she stood in the doorway and lobbed Alec's light grenade into the dimly-lit room.

To make it a proper experiment, Willow was there acting as a control subject. Willow wore the protective glasses that Alec had designed as a safety measure, but Buffy's eyes were uncovered. It really touched Alec that Buffy had that much faith in the invention of a kid she'd never met; or, rather, that she trusted Willow's judgment that much. Buffy had also argued that she could still fight with her eyes closed, so a few seconds of disrupted vision wouldn't be so risky for her.

An excited Willow called him that night, to report the results.

"It worked! Light streamed out of it in narrow targeted beams, causing every vampire in the room to burst into flames. Half a dozen vampires, wiped out in under 10 seconds."

Alec danced around like a grinning idiot in the privacy of his bedroom.

"There was a bright flash, but I could still see perfectly well," Willow continued. "Buffy says she was briefly dazzled, but her vision came back after she blinked a couple of times. It was just as well, because a couple more vampires ran down the stairs. They were too shocked to put up much of a fight, and Buffy quickly dusted them."

Together, they then brainstormed how Alec could write up the experiment for his science fair display; he couldn't label his project "My very easy plan for killing vampires", after all.

Willow posited that the light grenade could conceivably have a military application, if the US Army ever had to infiltrate caves or something. Soldiers who'd just clambered up steep mountains, carrying heavy gear, would probably have a higher body temperature than guys who'd been sitting around in the dark doing nothing. The light would incapacitate the enemy, facilitating their capture or killing. And it'd work better than a standard stun grenade, because its effect was more targeted.

Alec thought it sounded plausible. Even if America wasn't going to be fighting such a war any time soon, the military was always interested in what they called "blue-skies thinking". When he'd hacked the Pentagon's databases last year, he'd found details of some _very_ weird projects. There was an attempt to develop psychic soldiers, for example; the training included staring at goats, trying to make them explode. There was also serious interest in a "gay bomb" to make enemy servicemen crazy for each other.

***

At the science fair, which that year was held in Los Angeles, Alec's light grenade attracted a _lot_ of attention. Predictably, men in uniform – and a few in suits who were probably spooks of some kind – clustered around his display and gave him their business cards. It was nice for his ego, but he had no intention of calling them.

Interestingly, Professor Maggie Walsh from UC Sunnydale also showed up, and seemed very keen to talk to Alec about his project. Willow had told him about the professor's work with The Initiative, a covert government agency devoted to fighting and studying supernatural creatures. So Alec was careful not to give Walsh _any_ hint that he knew about vampires and demons. He didn't want to be recruited.

Alec won the science fair's top prize, fulfilling his last remaining ambition from freshman year. The commemorative plaque would look nice on Nana's mantelpiece, along with Sheena's high school diploma and Tommy's college basketball trophy. And the $2,000 prize money would help get him the best laptop money could buy!

After the fair, Alec had two days to spare before he had to fly back to Atlanta. He convinced his physics teacher that he had relatives in a nearby town (when Mr. Cameron called the number his star student had given him, Willow did a _very_ convincing impression of a respectable elderly aunt). Then Alec hopped on a bus and headed to Sunnydale.

It was so strange to drive through the nicely manicured streets and see all the landmarks of Willow's life: the cemeteries where so many vampires rose and then died again, the Bronze nightclub which had been attacked so often, and the charred ruins of the high school. Alec also noticed the truly remarkable number of churches for a town outside the Bible Belt. Willow had mentioned that the pervading sense of unease in Sunnydale caused many residents to turn to religion, even if they didn't know _why_ they needed the solace.

Willow met him at the bus station, with her girlfriend Tara in tow (Willow's coming out a few months back had been a shock, but she seemed very happy). Tara was sweet, gentle and reserved, and seemed like a good counterbalance to Willow's nervous energy.

After dropping Tara off at her dorm, Willow took Alec to a café on Main Street. There, he finally met Buffy and Xander. The three of them seemed to speak their own language, with many sentences starting with "Remember when..." and lots of obscure references and bizarre jokes. Still, they did their best to make Alec feel welcome.

Sitting beside Alec at their corner table, Buffy thanked him for his work on the vampire killing device. To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then, while her mouth was still close to his ear, she quietly told Alec the truth: she was the Slayer, chosen by The Powers That Be to fight vampires and the forces of darkness.

This actually wasn't too surprising to Alec. In his original research on vampires, two terms were often mentioned by those forum members who actually seemed to know what they were talking about. The Slayer: a teenage girl with super strength, rapid healing, and (usually) a short life expectancy. And the Watchers: mostly fusty old British guys who collected vampire lore and trained the Slayer.

Alec had wondered at the time if Buffy might be the Slayer. She seemed to be the leader of their little vigilante group, incredibly strong and resilient, and totally devoted to the cause. From Willow's description, Mr. Giles would surely have to be her Watcher. Alec had never asked Willow about Buffy, though, and she'd never volunteered the information. He hadn't minded being kept in the dark; he had figured it was Buffy's secret to tell.

So he thanked Buffy for confiding in him, and promised to keep her secret. Then he gave her a present: two new light grenades. With the addition of a tiny solar panel on one side, the improved grenade (version 3.0) was rechargeable. He figured it was a perfect fit for California, with its plentiful sunshine and focus on reducing waste.

Looking around the table at the three friends, Alec felt envious. The Scoobies had faced unimaginable danger, over and over, and yet they could still laugh and tease each other. Alec just hoped that someday, he would have a bunch of friends like this.


End file.
